170- Atilla Cometh

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Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome,

episode 170: Attila Cometh.

So last week, we saw how the myriad external pressures on the Roman Empire threatened to crack it up completely.

But you may have noticed that these external pressures were falling unevenly on the two administrative halves of the Empire.

Sadly, by the mid-fifth century, the Western Empire had become little more than a semi-functional confederation of barbarian tribes, with the imperial court at Ravenna sort of managing to cling at some semblance of its former prestige.

Huge swaths of what had once been a truly united political entity were now autonomous zones run with little regard for the emperor's authority.

In contrast, the Eastern Empire was doing pretty well for itself, all things considering.

Since hitting rock bottom with the double blow of Julian's failed campaign against the Sassanids in the late 360s and the Gothic War of the late 370s, the East had actually rebounded nicely.

I don't mean to imply that the fifth century was some kind of picnic for Constantinople, but you just don't see the succession of, and then they signed a treaty giving away Egypt, and then they signed a treaty giving away Greece, and then they signed a treaty giving away Cappadocia, the way you do with the West.

But this week the hammer, or should I say the scourge, is about to drop on the East as hard as it ever fell on the West.

And though Constantinople isn't about to lose control of any land, it is going to cost them a pretty penny to hang on to what's theirs.

Because Attila the Hun drives a hard bargain.

So you'll recall from last week that through the 430s and into the early 440s, the Eastern Empire was feeling secure enough in its own position that it was sending troops to the West to help contain the Vandals in North Africa.

Now this was not a purely altruistic act.

Vandals spreading across North Africa means Vandals might eventually reach Egypt, which is a totally unacceptable development.

Plus, Vandal pirates disrupting shipping lanes was bad for everyone's business, both East and West alike.

But though containing the Vandals was most certainly in the best strategic interests of Constantinople, it was in a long-term preventative sort of way.

That luxury of being able to think long-term came to a screeching halt in 441, when the Eastern Empire was simultaneously attacked on two fronts by its two biggest potential enemies, the Sassanids in the far east and the Huns in the north.

Suddenly, stripping off soldiers from the Danube frontier and sending them off to Sicily to fight vandals seemed like a really, really poor decision.

Now just to get this out of the way, the Sassanid threat receded almost as quickly as it advanced.

It is possible that their brief offensive against Roman positions in Armenia had been launched at the behest of Vandal ambassadors, who were looking to tie down Constantinople while Genseric moved to annex the province of Africa.

But it appears that the Persian heart was never really in the attack.

Becoming embroiled in a major war with the Romans, just so some ill-mannered barbarians could seize some land on the other side of the Mediterranean, was no one's idea of good policy, and so the Sassanids withdrew almost as quickly as they had advanced.

Not that the Vandals minded, if they really were behind the brief campaign.

By that point, Constantinople had its hands full anyway, so Sasanid aggression was no longer required, because the Huns were feeling aggressive all on their own.

The Huns had returned to the Danube frontier in force after five years of fruitless campaigning against the Persians,

likely hoping that they would be able to extract from the Sassanids the same sort of indemnity deal they had already extracted from Constantinople, the Huns were now returning to the Hungarian plain disappointed men.

I'm just speculating here, but I have to believe that five years' worth of futile campaigning in the east played a role in Bleda and Attila's decision to adopt a far more hostile posture towards the Romans when they returned.

It seems reasonable that there would have been a fair amount of grumbling about the costly boondoggle the brother kings had just retreated from with nothing to show for it.

How long would the brothers be tolerated if they didn't bring home some bacon, and soon?

So in 441, the Huns crossed the Danube and began sacking Roman cities and towns.

Make no mistake about it.

This time there was no cover story about pursuing wayward vassals.

This was a straight-up invasion of Roman territory with the intent of carting off any riches contained therein.

Well, that's not exactly right.

Carting off the riches contained therein was a nice bonus, but it's pretty clear that the attacks were mostly about forcing Constantinople to once again increase the annual indemnity it paid to the Huns.

After all, attacks, campaigns, and battles risked Hun lives and treasure.

But sitting around while the weak-willed and frightened Romans hand-delivered wagons full of gold, that risked almost nothing.

So why conquer Rome when you can just turn it into a tax-paying vassal?

So through 441 and 442, the Huns commenced a series of hit and run raids to remind Constantinople just how insecure their borders were, especially after they had foolishly sent that expedition off to the west to fight the Vandals.

Driving the point home that this time the Huns really meant business, the strongest and most important cities of the upper Danube were targeted, including the old imperial capital of Sirmium, which the Huns stormed in the late summer of 442.

The Romans attempted to resist, but having lost valuable resources to the expeditionary force, they were simply no match.

The Hun army rolled right across Dacia and Moesia, sacking almost every major city along the way,

which was, without question, the single most shocking and terrifying development to Roman war planners.

You'll recall that the dynamic of the Gothic War after the Battle of Adrianople was that Fridigern and his Goths had the run of the open plains, but that they were unable to take any of the cities since their siege craft was real amateur hour stuff.

So as bad as it got, the Goths could never close the deal, a fact everyone eventually recognized, and a fact that led the Goths to finally accept Theodosius' peace overtures.

So, when the Huns first started pouring across the Danube, it is entirely likely that the Roman high command thought that the same rules would apply.

Okay, we get the people and the food behind the walls, the Huns run around for a little while, it'll be rotten, but we'll get through it.

But to their very great horror, the Huns breached the walls of the first city they hit, and then the next city they hit, and then the next city they hit.

This is what really launched the Huns into being nightmarish monsters from hell.

You couldn't hide from them anywhere.

So far as I can tell, there is no obvious explanation for why the Huns were so much better at siege craft than any other barbarian tribe.

But they were, and there is speculation that their recurrent service with Aetius and the other Roman generals over the last 30 years had led them to pick up a trick or two.

And though that may be the best rationale, it doesn't really explain why the Goths remained so rotten at breaking into walled cities after they had served in and around the Roman legions for the last fifty years.

So it is a bit of a mystery why the Huns were able to crack the nut that so far no other barbarian nation had been able to crack.

Even the Vandals down in North Africa owed their occupation of Carthage more to intimidation and betrayal than to brute force.

Faced with the stark reality of Hun power, the wind went out of Theodosius II's sails.

He absolutely had to get the Huns to stop their attacks.

His armies couldn't stop them, his walls couldn't stop them, so it would have to be the cash.

As I said, Attila and Bleda were not messing around this time, and after proving beyond any doubt that they could pretty much do whatever they want whenever they wanted, it was going to cost the Romans to get them to stop doing whatever they wanted whenever they wanted.

For starters, that annual indemnity that you've been paying?

Cross out 700 pounds of gold and double it to 1400 pounds of gold.

Got it?

Okay, next, we have captured just scads of prisoners.

Really, we've got more of them than we know what to do with.

Now we can either kill them or we'll sell them back to to you.

Say at twelve solvadi ahead?

A mere pittance, we agree, but we're feeling generous.

So are we all good here?

Just go ahead and put the gold over there.

There you go.

That's a good little Roman.

The Huns, temporarily good to their word, withdrew back across the Danube after the money was delivered.

But the resulting peace cannot have felt at all secure to Constantinople.

The Eastern legions had been utterly shown up.

the defenses of key cities had been breached, and the economy of the central empire was thrashed and about to be overtaxed to pay the Huns to stay out.

And perhaps most frightening of all, when you got right down to it, nothing more than a handshake prevented the Huns from just coming right back over the Danube.

But the Huns were more honorable than the Romans perhaps gave them credit for, and they did indeed stay out of Roman territory for the next few years.

It wouldn't be until the Romans broke the terms of the treaty that the Huns again launched themselves on an invasion, this time one that would take them to the walls of Constantinople itself.

While the central empire was being ravaged by the Huns, Fallabius Aetius was doing his best to keep a handle on things in the West, which these days had less to do with thinking up sound laws and running a competent administration, and more to do with managing an increasingly complicated system of treaties with recent barbarian immigrants.

In 442, when it became clear that no more help would be coming from the east thanks to the Hun invasion, Aetius was forced to formally recognize Vandal dominion over North Africa.

Now I know what you're thinking, but it looks as though included in the treaty was a promise from the Vandals to continue the grain shipments to Italy, at least in part.

Which makes sense when you think about it.

The economy of North Africa revolved around supplying Italy with food.

For Genseric to simply declare a trade embargo would have caused economic chaos in the lands he was now trying to rule, probably to the point that his new regime would have been fatally destabilized.

Plus, cutting off the grain would have essentially forced Ravenna to launch a full scale war against the Vandals, which was not at all in Genseric's best interest.

But the deal did not just leave the status quo in place,

because not accounted for in the treaty was the tax revenue generated by all that agricultural production and trade.

That Genseric claimed for himself, cutting off yet another huge source of imperial revenue.

So the Italians would not starve to death, but it was getting damn hard for them to afford stuff, like, you know, standing armies.

This revised treaty with the Vandals in place, Aetius spent the next few years in Gaul and Hispania, attempting to hold on to what little tax paying territory Ravenna had left.

What remained of the Burgundians were rounded up in four hundred forty three, and force marched south, where they were settled south of Lake Geneva.

Aetius then led Roman forces against rebellions, incursions, and criminality of every shape and size.

Through the mid-four forties he fought the Franks and Alans, both of whom were trying to carve out larger niches for themselves than Aetius could responsibly allow.

He also had to deal with homegrown gangs of marauders, who had grown into fairly large and organized bands.

Their homes overrun and the economy in tatters, many dispossessed gallow Romans joined up with these gangs and started causing all sorts of additional havoc for Aetius, not just with their persistent harassment of what was left of the law-abiding citizens of the region, but also because they were a constant threat to his supply and communication lines, as Aetius tried to wage small-scale wars on multiple fronts against multiple enemies.

But despite the fact that he had so many balls in the air, by all accounts, Aetius did a remarkable job holding things together.

Sure, he dropped North Africa, which I should mention is the single biggest criticism leveled against him by historians in an otherwise unanimous flood of glowing praise.

But other than that one glaring omission, he managed the European provinces about as well as you could hope, given the resources at his disposal.

At the very least, it's impressive that there was even still a Western Empire for Attila to invade here in a couple of years, and even more impressive than that, that there was still a Western Empire left after Attila came and went, which Aetius gets and deserves most of the credit for.

Speaking of Attila, after waltzing through the Middle Empire as easily as if they had entered in some kind of cheat code, he and his brother led the Huns back north across the Danube in 444.

After settling back down, however, the nearly inevitable result of having co-rulers occurred, and the brothers appear to have turned on one another, each seeking sole control of the Hun nation.

At least, that's what we presume happened, because in 445, Bleda suddenly drops dead, and the universal assumption is that Attila had his brother killed.

Now the sole ruler of the premier military power in the wider Mediterranean world, Attila kicked back to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Except that Theodosius and his ministers down in Constantinople decided that the cracking of solidarity between the two brothers hinted at a larger fracturing of Hun unity.

Piecing together the cause and effect of all this is no easy job, but it looks like the Romans decided to test their theory of internal discord among the Huns by abruptly cutting off the indemnity payments,

or based on some math that we'll get to in a second, that they never actually started sending them at all, counting on the new rivalry between Attila and Bleda to keep the Huns too busy to worry about a few missed carts of gold.

By 447, though, Attila had emerged victorious from the power struggle, consolidated his authority over the whole Hun nation, and was now free to wonder where his money is.

The reason it is questioned whether the Romans ever sent along a payment after the settlement of 442-443 is because of the initial demand Attila delivered to the Romans in early 447.

His ambassadors to Constantinople presented a bill to Theodosius for 6,000 pounds of gold, which, when you do the math, covers four years' worth of missed Roman payments.

The Romans rejected the demand.

They had had four years to consolidate their power along the Danube and were itching to see if they could permanently refuse the Hun leg breakers.

So in early 447, the Roman bill still unpaid, Attila once again led his forces on a sweeping invasion of the central empire.

Once again, the Roman forces were made to look like fools.

Four years of planning and entrenchment had amounted to exactly nothing.

A Roman field army met the Huns near the river Eutis, and though they were able to inflict more damage on the Huns than any Roman force had ever before inflicted on Attila, the legions were soon overwhelmed and scattered,

which left the road to Constantinople wide open.

And that was exactly the road Attila intended to take.

It was time to plant a flag in the emperor's backyard.

And his timing could not have been better, because on January 27, 447 AD, a massive earthquake struck Constantinople, and, you guessed it, the Theodotian walls were severely damaged.

Broken, crumbled, with enormous gaping holes.

This looked like it could spell the end for the capital city.

Attila the Hun, Attila the Hun, was on his way at the head of an army that had thus far proved totally invincible.

And the only hope of the city, the Theodotian walls, was now a broken shell of its former self.

And it's not like the people of Constantinople were going to get the fortifications rebuilt before the Huns arrived, unless, of course, they did.

In one of the most remarkable feats of the ancient world, engineers and laborers, half out of their minds with fear, worked around the clock at a frantic pace to put the Theodotian walls back together.

In March of 447, with Attila still maybe a hundred miles out, the last brick was laid.

In just two months, the citizens of Constantinople had completely rebuilt the Theodosian walls, and as a result, they now stood a reasonably good chance of turning Attila back.

Fear, as has been shown in study after study, is probably the single greatest motivator in all the world.

When Attila reached Constantinople in mid 447, a Roman army was mustered to oppose him, but the Huns promptly blew through them without even breaking a sweat.

This was almost to be expected.

Then everyone held their breath to see what would happen next.

Would the new walls hold?

The Huns attacked and were repulsed.

They attacked some more and were repulsed some more.

There was nothing the Huns could do.

The Theodotian walls were impregnable.

Attila had taken Sirmium and Nysus and Philippopolis and every other Roman city he had ever laid eyes on, but when he hit the Theodotian walls, he was stopped dead in his tracks.

So, just like every other invading army that would come and go over the next thousand years, the Huns were forced to withdraw from Constantinople.

But just because there was this one thing on earth that could stop the Huns, that didn't mean that there was anything else on Earth that could stop the Huns.

By the end of 447, Attila was on the other side of the Sea of Marmara, near the entrance to the Hellespont, when he encountered a second branch of the Eastern Army.

This army fared no better than their brothers had fared at Eutis and in front of Constantinople.

The Huns blasted them to smithereens.

The East was now essentially left without any field armies, and aside from the Theodosian walls, left without any way to defend itself.

What in the world were they going to do now?

That question is going to have to wait for next time.

And unfortunately, next time is going to have to wait a few weeks.

I know you are as surprised to hear this as I am to say it, but the next History of Rome tour has arrived.

We will be gone from February the 24th through March the 6th, so the next episode of the History of Rome is tentatively scheduled for March the 12th, which will be the Sunday after I get back.

I'm hoping I'll be able to turn that episode around for you so I don't disappear off the grid forever, but life is quite a bit more hectic these days than it used to be.

So, you never know.

If the episode on March 12 is not going to happen, I promise I'll let you know as soon as I know, and I also promise that I'll have a darn good reason for not doing it.

For those of you who are going on the tour, I can't wait to meet you.

For those of you who aren't going on the tour, be sure to stop by thehistoryofroam tour.com.

Drop us a line and let us know that you're super sad you aren't going this time around, but can't wait to find out when the next tour is so that you and your whole family can come along.

The History of Rome Tour is super fun, and I think everyone who has done it so far will attest to that.

So, I will see you in a few weeks, and for some of you, I will see you in a few days.

You're juggling a lot.

Full-time job, side hustle, maybe a family.

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That's not crazy.

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